OK, so the reason I deleted my above comment is I realised I was speaking from ignorance and decided to actually read the complaint. There are two key points that basically address everything we're worried about (emphasis mine):
Quote25. Under the termination provisions, prior "derivative works" "can continue to be" distributed as before. 17 U.S.C. 203(b)(I). Plaintiff's recovery of the U.S. copyright to their Screenplay therefor does no prevent Defendants or their licensees from continuing to exploit prior derivative works, including the original Predator film and TCFFC's five sequel films.
26. In addition, because the the Copyright Act has no extra-territorial application, the foreign rights to Plaintiff's Screenplay remains with TCFF. As a result, after the effective date of Plaintiff's termination, new derivative Predator works would simply require a license from the Plaintiffs, thereby enabling the authors to fairly participate with others at a level reflective of their work's market value. Accordingly, Plaintiffs' exercise of their copyright termination does not prevent the exploitation of the Predator franchise; it simply allows its original creators to, at long last, participate in the financial rewards of their creation, just as Congress had intended.
Basically the law they're invoking was designed to allow authors to re-negotiate their cut for their works
after the market value of their work was proved with time.
This is the key thing. When they sold
Hunters and royalties were assigned, nobody had any idea if it would take off and spawn a decades-long franchise, or crash and burn. Time has proved the market value of the piece; this law is specifically designed to allow authors to have better bargaining power to get more of the value their IP created.
So is it about money?
Sure.
But it's about giving original authors the legal framework to get better compensation should their works spawn multi-million/billion dollar franchises, without being stuck with pennies-and-cents royalties grossly disproportionate to the actual value of the piece.
Also worth noting, this law
is not applicable to work-for-hire. The reason the Thomas Brothers have this option is they wrote
Hunters on spec, not commission.
It also states that the Brothers have presented two alternate dates, in 2022 and 2023, in response to Disney's claims that they're actually entitled to a longer waiting period (they're not, but they figured they'd hedge their bets and present the options just in case).
So if the Brothers win the case and Predator dries up, it's because Disney/Fox is too f**king stingy to pay their licenses, not because they lost the rights.